Though I say “yes I see”, no I really don't see (is my smiley face still on?): beer (brewing and drinking), camping, eating, hugging trees, kiting, fishing, ironing, hiking, geocaching and munzing, painting (oils, emulsion and gloss), ranting, recording history as I see it. Days with family, days with friends, days with granddogs. Always an opinion (always wrong), and rarely a dull moment. Welcome to my world... remember - history is written by those who make the effort to write it.

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14 October 2013 (Monday) - Earthcache

It has been said that
cats and dogs are often regarded by many as "furry children".
It has also been said that whilst cats are akin to teenagers, dogs
are more like toddlers. I was certainly reminded of the nocturnal
activities of the most recent fruit of my loin as a toddler this
morning. At 2am Fudge jumped on the bed next to me, and pushed and
pushed until I was hanging out of the bed. It was at this point that
he started snoring. Much as the most recent fruit of my loin used to
do when she was two years old.

Over brekkie I watched
two more episodes of "Early Doors". Quality
television(!) And then I set off to work. I left a few minutes
earlier than I had on Friday as I found I had run short of time then.
Today the roads were really busy; I could see no reason why.

As I drove I listened to
the news, as always. I don't think anything had happened recently.
All of the news was of events and happenings from long ago. A
whistleblower in America was telling tales of when a mishap on an
American Air Force bomber in the 1960s which resulted in a nuclear
bomb being accidentally dropped on Carolina; and only a faulty
switch stopped the thing detonating.

I think that justifies my
membership of C.N.D. in my youth.

Spanish victims of the
drug thalidomide were taking the manufacturers to court to
claim compensation. And doing this some forty years after their
UK counterparts. I couldn't help but wonder why they had waited so
long. No one on the radio seemed to feel this delay was in any way
significant. I did. Surely these people would have wanted
compensation forty years ago?

I got an email. I've been
working on an Earthcache
recently. An Earthcache is a virtual thing in which people visit a
place of special geological significance and answer some questions
about what they see. I've set one up on the Downs at Wye at the
Devil's Kneading Trough. After quite a lot of work on my part I
managed to get the thing accepted. I'm quite pleased about that - on
my geo-profile I now own seven different cache types. (lame!)

Anyway - the idea behind
my latest brainchild is that people park up at the car park at Wye
Downs, answer a few questions, walk down to the bottom of the slope
and then answer some more. And then email the answers to me in order
to claim a find. The concept isn't difficult.

Someone logged this
Earthcache within an hour or so of it going live, but with no email
coming from them someone else got the official First to Find three
hours later. The one claiming to get there first sent their email
during the early evening.

So far no one has
quibbled about "official FTF" but I suspect this
trivial little episode will generate a serious squabble in the
fullness of time. There are those who can get quite defensive and
aggressive about First to Finding. It's the sort of petty triviality
that on occasion gets blown out of all proportion.

And so to work where I
did my thing. Bearing in mind the dreadful weather yesterday I sulked
quite a bit today as I kept looking out the window at the wonderful
sunshine until it got dark.